Foreign looks familiar in fried chicken

Kevin Pang recommends fried chicken from various cuisines

If only our world could be a Benetton ad, filled with beautiful multicultural people looking happy, acting inclusive and all. Until then, let's connect through a more common bond: fried chicken.

Chicken Charga at Sabri Nihari: This Punjabi take on fried chicken arrives encased in aluminum foil, a steak knife speared from above, and the whole bird inside colored an angry orange. Sabri Nihari's Chicken Charga is tear-inducingly spicy, crunchy, complex, perhaps the most original fried chicken on Devon Avenue. It's coated with a wet, seasoned chickpea flour batter and deep-fried for 25 minutes. Then they throw anything deemed pungent at the chicken: diced onions, ginger, cilantro, jalapeno, crushed peppers, garlic powder and a liberal squirt of hot sauce. Its greatest pleasure, however, is tactile, when your fellow diners rip the chicken apart until what's left on the table is a unrecognizable pile of orange color and bones. $16.99, 2502 W. Devon Ave., 773-465-3272

Mike's Fried Chicken at Sun Wah: Mike Cheng shadowed his father's cooking mentor a few years ago and gleaned the recipe for Cantonese fried chicken (zha zi gai). His dish — chicken with brittle-crispy skin, hacked to chunks — was on Sun Wah's secret menu for a while, but word leaked and now the genie's out of the bottle. Mike's Fried Chicken is a salt-rubbed bird that's oven-baked, though not all the way through. It's finished with a flash fry, and glazed with Sun Wah's vinegar-molasses Peking duck marinade. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the skin is the reason for fried chicken's being. In Sun Wah's case, the chicken's startling juiciness is incentive enough. $13.50 whole, $7 half (takeout), $15.75 whole, $9 half (dine-in), 5039 N. Broadway, 773-769-1254

Gai tod at Siam Noodle and Rice: On a good day, Uptown's Siam Noodle and Rice sells 60 orders of gai tod, the officially sanctioned fried chicken of Thai street corners. On a slow day, they'll sell only 30 orders. Which is to say for 25 years, gai tod has been every bit the constant at the restaurant as pad thai and pad see ew. The wing and drumette pieces aren't flour-dredged or battered, but marinated in nam pla fish sauce and white pepper, then fried naked into crispy little buggers. The spicy dipping sauce uses even more fish sauce, chili flakes and a spouse-repelling amount of garlic. $6.25, 4654 N. Sheridan Road, 773-769-6685

Fried chicken at Dee's Place: Any time I ask a soul food chef the secret of his/her dishes, the answer will always be "love." I really should stop asking. Sure, it makes for a lovely sound bite, but I'd almost rather the answer be, "There's no secret. We just cook it right." At Dee's Place in Wicker Park, chef Kareem Abdullah's fried chicken is the best dish on his menu. An overnight marinade with the standard spices, a coating of seasoned flour and corn starch, then 12 minutes in the fryer. There's a lightness to the crisp skin that allows diners to pick up pieces cleanly, but the juices flow after first bite. The fried chicken is just as good smothered in their gravy. In fact, there's something enjoyable about the slightly soggified crunchiness. There's no secret — they just cook it right. $7.50, 2114 W. Division St., 312-348-6117

Salt and pepper chicken wings at Sweet Station: In Chinatown, this polychromatic Cantonese diner serves 10 tiny but crackly, crispy wings and drumettes. The dish is one level beyond seasoned — which isn't to say oversalted, but a profound savoriness with garlic hits and a jalapeno burn that arrives seconds later. It's that mysterious fifth taste sensation of umami that means only one thing: the presence of the Cantonese-cooking staple MSG. Don't let that dissuade you from trying these one-slurp wonders. You're down the rabbit hole anyway with the deep-frying, so might as well live a little. $5.95, 2101 S. China Place, 312-842-2228